This project is a theoretical inquiry into specific benefits deriving from a “mobility as a service” (MaaS) model of public transportation systems
MaaS is an emerging concept “that integrates public transport with other mobility services, such as car sharing, ride sourcing, and bicycle sharing” (Smith, 2020) through a unified digital platform that makes sustainable forms of transportation more efficient for users.
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Working from previous discourse on sharing economy models as a form of collaborative reciprocal exchange, I frame this inquiry within the theoretical lens of transportation equity.
I refer to transportation equity as the extent to which transportation systems serve all members of the public regardless of social identity or status.
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This framework leads me to the following question: how might a specific “mobility-as-a-service” model help provide the benefit of community cohesion by fostering an integrated sharing economy platform of collaborative reciprocal exchange?
Community cohesion – also referred to as “social capital” and “neighboring” – is defined in the Victoria Transport Policy Institute’s Evaluating Public Transit Benefits and Costs Best Practices Guidelines (Litman, 2021) as “the quality of interactions among residents in a community” based on their level of familiarity and care for one another.
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Image pulled from Victoria Transport Policy Institute’s August 2021 report, “Evaluating Public Transit Benefits and Costs”
My case study for this inquiry is Taipei’s bikeshare system, Youbike, and its integration with the city’s Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system.
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Click this gif for animated map of Taipei’s bikeshare usage (done by a fellow Youbike enthusiast)
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Specifically, I argue that the city’s deeply rooted cultural norms guiding residents’ shared usage of the MRT provide a social foundation upon which the YouBike system can further develop the benefit of community cohesion for the public as a whole.
I formulate this speculative argument through an analysis of existing research on the following features of YouBike and its integration with the MRT:
With this theoretical analysis, I aim to show that a dedicated empirical study of this question would be useful for transportation planners’ ongoing task of providing more sustainable and equitable forms of transportation.